UNC Head Football Coach Larry Fedora did every other ACC football coach a solid yesterday, by putting all attention on him. During his media session, Fedora — Well, I mean how do you describe a guy going off the rails?
His media session seemed to be going fine. He was bantering with the reporters. Calling out one for wearing a shirt with avocados on it.
And then he went somewhere else.
In an otherwise predictable loss by Pitt to Louisville, there was the added bonus of Coach Kevin Stallings getting into it with a fan or two near the end of the game.
During the second half, with the game well out of reach, Stallings reacted to a fan near his team’s bench who the Pitt coach said was saying “something bad” about his players. At a certain point, Stallings responded, according to various reports, by saying “At least we didn’t pay our guys $100,000.”
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“We’re down, the game’s over with; you don’t need to insult kids that are out there trying to fight hard and do their best,” Stallings said after the game. “I should have chosen some different words, but I’m not going to let people take shots at our players.”
When asked, the second-year Pitt coach declined to elaborate what the fan said about his players.
“That’s enough,” Stallings said.
I know, color me shocked as well that a coach who has a history of outbursts that get caught on a mike did so once more.
The Narduzzi Era at Pitt began yesterday and Pitt came out with a 45-37 win against the tough and persistent Youngstown State Penguins in front of 49,969 mostly yellow-painted fans. Here are the official game stats in case you are wondering how what happened came about.
There is good news and bad news coming out of this ballgame. Here are the highlights so that you can see some of each type of play we had Saturday:
Pitt’s fall training camp starts today with the player’s reporting in from their time off-campus where they were tasked with finding a spot for the next new Pitt Stadium. Serious on-field stuff won’t begin until tomorrow however when the staff and team can get on the field and start getting familiar with the new crop of players and reacquainted with the physical side of actual football.
Just as a point of info here is how the practice days will be conducted in general. A typical single practice day will go like this:
Coach Narduzzi Briefing: 9:25 a.m.
Practice Viewing/Photography Window: 9:55-10:25 a.m.
Closed practice from 10:25 until 12:15
Interviews: 12:15 p.m. (select players and assistants)
This is what we’ll see when Tuesday’s Media Day rolls around and I’ll be up there for those sessions (more on that later):
Practice Viewing/Photography Window: 9:55-10:25 a.m.
Coach Narduzzi Press Conference: 1:30 p.m. (second floor team room)
Team Interview and Photo Session: 2:45-4 p.m.
Some interesting things to note is that in all of the allowed two-a-day practices the evening practice is completely closed to the media. That makes sense as no real news will be generated between 2:30 or so until they start up again in the evening. So that is the logistics behind the next three weeks of camp.
In the most timely news to hit the street and anger Pitt football fans our young DE Rori Blair made a monumental mistake when he chose to smoke reefer and treat the parkway like he was in the Hot Metal Bridge 500 race qualifying rounds. From The P-G this morning:
State police wrote in a criminal complaint that a trooper working near the Fort Pitt Bridge clocked Blair, 20, of Upper St. Clair, driving at 117 mph in a 55-mph zone March 15. That trooper pulled the car over in a left lane on Fifth Avenue in Oakland and “detected a strong odor of marijuana emitting from his breath and about his person as he spoke along with blood shot glassy eyes,” police wrote.
Police took Blair to UPMC Mercy for a blood test, which came back positive for cannabinoids, police said. They charged Blair via summons Monday with driving under the influence, driving at an unsafe speed and other violations.
Yesterday we had a discussion on The Blather regarding WR Tyler Boyd being dropped off the Biletnikoff Award watch list because of his arrest and it’s circumstances. The fact that he hasn’t been convicted or anything yet was raised as a counter to that decision. However, the Award committee has separate criteria/standards/rules that they are applying here, just like a university or any other formal institution. As such they don’t have to wait or even care about a conviction.
Being legally convicted of some transgression are a civil and/or criminal judiciary matter, not a non-legal institutional one. The difference is that universities and their football programs apply discipline and sanctions as they see fit. Hence we have suspensions and even dismissals which are based on internal and NCAA rules and not the local criminal laws.
There is a solid basis in the award committee making this decision, as the criteria is pretty straight forward:
5. The candidate must display leadership and self discipline; and he must have a significant, positive impact on his team’s success.
This is apparently what Paul Chryst’s victory dance looks like. Post to twitter with the hashtag #ChrystDance. Enjoy the .gif after the jump.
This one was ugly; like Wannstedt’s mustache full of fish sammich ugly. I don’t know if I have the stomach to watch the defense and give you guys a review. If you really, really want it (post in comments what your opinion is) I’ll do it, but only because you guys are the best. I say that earnestly, not sarcastically. Here are a few quick thoughts. (more…)
This site takes a deliberate no political discussions, please — approach. This post will touch on politics, so I apologize in advance.
Specifically this will touch on the candidacy of Natalie Tennant. She is the Secretary of State for West Virginia and running for the US Senate to replace the retiring Jay Rockefeller. Yes, this will be about doing something stupid. I know, redundant when mentioning West Virginia.
Don’t forget, today is National Networking Day for Pitt. Hopefully you have something happening in your area. Unfortunately, nothing here in the Cleveland area. If you are involved, feel free to leave specific info about your city’s event in the comments below.
Jester Weah has wheels.
With graduation from Madison (Wis.) Memorial High School and his first class at Pitt awaiting come June, Weah will try to make Wisconsin track and field history Friday and Saturday at the state championships at Wisconsin-Lacrosse University. He is the No. 1 seed in the 100-meter run and No. 3 in the 200, with school-record times of 10.59 and 21.94 seconds — in his first full year of running track.
“That’s crazy to think about,” Weah said.
He’s 6-3, 190 pounds and can run like that. Can’t say he doesn’t have the raw tools. It would be nice in a few years to have Wisconsin fans wondering how they missed a kid in their own town.
In the aftermath of the ACC Grant of Rights, it has been a lot of fun to take potshots at the numerous Hoopie message boarders and Twitiots who have spent the better part of a year flogging their sources for the imminent demise of the ACC.
The rumors and whispers of an ACC grant-of-rights have no basis in fact.
The beleaguered conference is not close to signing a grant-of-rights and discussions about one have been met with stiff internal resistance.
Internal resistance that my sources say could only be overcome by a significant increase in television money that puts the ACC on par with the Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC.
Money like that could only come from a 24-hour ACC branded sports channel much like the Big 10 Network or the upcoming SEC Network and that doesn’t seem likely. Why not? Why shouldn’t the ACC, with perhaps the largest media footprint of any conference, be able to launch its own network?
It’s simple economics — ESPN won’t let them. ESPN owns the ACC’s tier 3 television rights (along with Raycom) and doesn’t want the ACC competing (in much the same markets) with the SEC channel set to debut in 2014.
I don’t think there was an ACC-based blog or twitter account that didn’t either get directly hit with this stuff or had to address it in some form from a reader for the past year.
Since everyone is still bummed about yesterday’s loss, here’s a distraction.
For the most part, I haven’t given much thought to our erstwhile Backyard Brawl brethren. Still certain stories catch the eye.
Turns out those travel burdens in the Big 12 are as onerous as expected. If not more so. To the point where the Big 12 may have to help.
West Virginia University’s athletic department and the Big 12 Conference have agreed to attempt to make some travel changes to accommodate the problems the Mountaineers faced during their first season in the league.
Athletic Director Oliver Luck says the league offered no guarantees because “scheduling is always a challenge” but the league has agreed to attempt to make life on the road easier in a number of areas when it can.
WVU geographically is out of place in the Big 12, with every trip not only being of 1,700 miles round trip or more but fighting a time zone change which costs them an hour returning to Morgantown.
Football did not present as much of a problem as basketball, with weekly trips and mostly weekend games, but, according to Luck, the league was agreeable to trying to arrange it so the Mountaineers do not have to travel on back-to-back weeks for conference games during the season.
The Big 12 has to be as helpful as possible to the Hoopies. Oh, they aren’t going anywhere, but if the Big 12 ever hopes to snag a school from the ACC — as WV message boarders often predict to be imminent — then they need to make it appear as if the travel problems are not insurmountable and screwing teams in the Eastern timezone that happen to be over 1700 miles from the rest of the conference members.
No doubt, you are aware that the Big East web site sell’s gear for all member schools. This still includes Pitt. It’s nice to see that they have embraced the Pitt’s departure to the ACC.
It’s the description that really drives it home:
Amidst all the hoopla of signing day, the Paul Chryst press conference praising the newest Panthers and promising that a DC will be named soon. There was information about the Spring practices and the annual Blue-Gold scrimmage.
The spring practices start on March 5. Seems a bit early when you are limited to only 15 practices, but okay.
They culminate with the Blue-Gold scrimmage that will be held this year at Bethel Park High School. Okay, we knew that the plan was to rotate to different high schools in Western PA. Just so happens to be the same HS as a big 2014 recruiting target for the O-line in Mike Grimm. Nice.
The game will be played on April 12 at 7pm. That’s a Friday. What the hell?
There’s plenty of good to recap from last night’s 80-48 win over Mount Saint Mary. There’s plenty to admire in Cam Wright having his best game, when he decided to play as a way to honor his father. The father that passed away that day. And I’ll get to that. Unfortunately, all of that had to be marred by petulance from John Johnson.
When friends on Twitter asked about the game he answered their questions.
Friend: “Yo bro, you didn’t play?”
Johnson: nah cuz, smh (shaking my head)
On Wednesday, Johnson sent out some cryptic messages. “Basketball is more political than the election.”
Here’s another: “Hard work doesn’t always pay off.”
And this is why college athletic departments have employees whose jobs are to monitor the Twitter accounts of athletes.
It’s easy to understand Johnson’s frustrations. He is watching a true freshman come in and start ahead of him. And according to Dixon, Johnson made great strides over the summer in his transition to point guard. Dixon praised him last Friday after Pitt’s second exhibition game.
It may not even be the fact that James Robinson is starting. Or Cam Wright playing more minutes than expected. Trey Zeigler seemed to be slipping because of defense, but he got the minutes (and played well).
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